KUALA LUMPUR- MALAYSIA is on ‘high alert’ over the swine flu threat and will install thermal scanners at international airports to screen arriving travellers, officials and reports said on Monday.
Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai said that hospitals have been ordered to notify authorities of patients with flu-like symptoms and that anyone testing positive should be quarantined.
‘Since the virus spreads from human to human, we are placed on high alert,’ he said, according to the Star daily.
Health workers in gloves and masks were taking the temperature of passengers arriving on flights from Los Angeles.
Mr Liow urged Malaysians not to travel to locations suspected of being hit by the disease, which may have killed more than 100 people in Mexico and may have spread to Europe, the Middle East and New Zealand.
‘Although the World Health Organisation has not called for any sanctions in travel or trade with those affected countries, I would like to advise all Malaysians against travelling to these places,’ he said, according to the Star website.
Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the government had stepped up monitoring at all the country’s entry points and said that systems introduced during a bird flu outbreak would be applied.
The World Health Organisation has warned that swine flu could become a pandemic and called on all nations to ‘intensify surveillance’. — AFP
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